Oh, pretty. We're having a cold spell at the moment, but there are plenty of buds, and the very first blooms on 'Sanguinea' and 'Old Blush'. 'Purezza' may have a couple of flowers, but I don't think the Lady Banks roses are quite there yet.

Apparently, under those cool, damp conditions, the yellow usually hidden within the flower, at the base of each petal, expands to manifest over the whole petal. When growing it, I had seen "yellow-ish" flowers on Jesse's strong lookalike, "Westside Road Cream Tea", but not to that extent. On the other hand, I'm more inland, don't get that kind of prolonged coolness.

I'm still hibernating. :-) But spring is more than just when it warms up in certain area. It's a way that's been used to divide up the season in days, calendar wise, for centuries. And many of the cultural celebrations that occur early spring, are basically just to give people something to do after a long winter. Where and when they originated, many have stemmed from pagan rituals from long, long ago.

I have been planting out for 2 or 3 weeks, starting with the seedlings I sowed last year and, in some cases, the year before. I have a bunch of perennials which have been bulking up, growing root mass, so I have been getting them in the ground as soon as even the tiniest bit of top growth is visible, working on the basis that there will be a whole lot more growth going on...but I just can't really see it yet. So a handful of penstemons (mensarum, strictus) and hardy geraniums as well as some fast growing penstemons such as smallii which have made a lot of growth from a late summer sowing.. Because I am clearing under long-established shrubs such as the enormo-roses, my aim is to grow a large number of easily raised, ground swallowing plants such as alchemilla (a form called 'robustum), aurinia, sedums, galliums, dianthus geranaium and campanulas...which have more or less filled up my greenhouse this winter. I need the space for the next tranche of seeds (have already started some of the annual climbers such as thubergia and cobaens). I have also planted out various cuttings (more penstemons, cistus, lavenders and salvias). So yep, I am right in the middle of the spring planting and sowing frenzy...which won't slow down until June, after the biennial sowing. July and August are my non-sowing months, when I could probably go on holiday if I didn't have a million pots of seedlings to attend to. I would say that my last planting of 2024 were 450 species tulips on Christmas Eve while the very first plants out of the blocks in 2025 were antennaria montana (to edge the wild tulips bed).